Home/Museums of Memory: The Recovery of Lost (National) Histories in the Uruguayan Documentaries Al pie del árbol blanco and El círculo

Museums of Memory: The Recovery of Lost (National) Histories in the Uruguayan Documentaries Al pie del árbol blanco and El círculo

Submitted by David Martin-Jones on Sat, 12/08/2012 - 13:34

Two Uruguayan documentaries, Al pie del árbol blanco (2007) and El círculo (2008), engage with the process of uncovering or recovering the recent past under military rule in Uruguay (1973–1985). Rather than following the established documentary convention of deploying archival footage, both films use a variety of cinematographic techniques to depict present-day places in an effort to reconstruct links between the past and the present. Contextualized in relation to the recent construction of museums of memory in the public sphere in countries such as Uruguay and Argentina, these documentaries construct two very personal virtual (in the sense of cinematic rather than physical) “museums of memory.” In this way they illustrate how individual attempts to reconstruct the lost past can fill in the gaps in official recollections of history.